You have raised a subject that I would like to use the rest of my time for, because it is a very important question. You are here in an important role: you are our legal counsel.
Later, we will be meeting the IT people.
You kind of put a damper on what we are and are not entitled to examine, and explained that we do have to respect the independence of every member. That is another principle we have to stand up for, I completely agree with you on that. Do you have any techniques to propose to us that would allow us to lift the veil on this situation without violating that right?
We are going to assume, for the purposes of this discussion, that there are only these five lobbyists. On that assumption, first, is there a way to determine what other communications there were between that employee and the five lobbyists in question, without examining the content? Do you think it is a breach of the member's independence to want to know at least whether there were other communications, without asking to know the content? Can we at least know that, without asking the member to tell us the content of those communications?